The Doctor Who Never Was
by rhpsdeadzonefan
Summary: The Thirteenth Doctor regenerates into Fourteen under great duress, but who does she become? Can her past selves save her before she loses herself completely?
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This was originally posted on Reddit. I'd had the idea for it for a while, but this writing prompt inspired me to actually start the fic: [eu] The Doctor dies and regenerates, only to come to a shocking conclusion. His/her new brain has no problems at all with violence.

* * *

She was strapped to an operating table when the regeneration began. The golden glow began to fill the room, scaring off the butchers that had been surrounding her. When the Doctor had stopped off alone on this planet for a quick jaunt, she had no idea what horrors were waiting for her when she arrived. The native inhabitants of the planet fancied themselves as amateur scientists, justifying their torture as a means of technological and physiological progression. Any and all new species that arrived had to be examined and their initial scans had shown that the Doctor was nothing like anything they'd ever seen before. She'd been taken by surprise soon after stepping out of her TARDIS and overpowered easily. She had never stood a chance.

The force from the regeneration energy easily broke through the shackles, leaving the Doctor's new body free. She sat up and gasped, looking around wildly to see if her captors were still there. She knew she didn't have much time to waste before they came back. She stood up, realizing very quickly that the only thing covering her was a sheet covered in blood - _her_ blood. No, not her's anymore. That blood belonged to someone else. Someone happier and far more trusting than she ever would be. Now she didn't know _who_ she was.

She pulled the sheet tighter around herself as she heard the familiar _vworp vworp_ of the TARDIS as it materialized in the room, but something was wrong. That wasn't her TARDIS. It had been so many lifetimes since that was her TARDIS. The door creaked open and the leather jacket clad Doctor peeked his head out. He looked aghast when he saw the sight before him.

"Get in," He urged her and the other Doctor did so, climbing into the familiar comfort of her home, even if it was from years past. She looked around, acclimating herself to the different interior as she staggered inside.

"What happened to you? Who did this to you?" Nine's voice cut through her thoughts.

It took her a moment to realize he was addressing her and even longer to register what he'd asked. Rage bubbled up inside her as she remembered what she'd gone through. She clenched her hand into a fist at her side and she fought the urge to punch the console.

"Something went wrong."

She was certain that the words had come from her mouth, but the voice sounded completely foreign to her. It was rough and raw and tinged with anger and hate. She looked up at her former self and there was recognition in his eyes. He could see so much of himself in her already. Both of them were wounded by what had happened to them. She surmised that he had probably just regenerated, even though she couldn't recall this interaction at all. He hadn't even met Rose yet. There was so much still ahead of him before he became her.

She looked down at herself realizing once again that she was naked save for the bloody surgical sheet.

"I'm going to change," She told him, moving past him to get some clothes.

"The wardrobe room is-"

"I know," She said, cutting him off and moving around like she owned the place. "Get us out of here," She ordered him.

It finally dawned on him once she'd retreated further into the TARDIS who she had to be. He didn't know why the TARDIS had crossed their time streams, but he knew it had to be bad for that sort of intervention. Before he could even get to the controls, the TARDIS whirred to life, already taking them elsewhere, but something wasn't right. He ran to the monitors, looking outside once they'd landed. There were two other familiar blue boxes landed right beside them.


	2. Chapter 2

The Fourteenth Doctor tried her best to avoid her own reflection in the full length mirror as she rifled through the wardrobe room for something to wear. She was avoiding anything with much flair, instead opting for something more muted and functional. She slipped on a pair of dark jeans and boots before choosing a black long sleeve top. She also grabbed a hair tie and pulled her hair back, having realized that it was longer than it ever had been and she didn't want it in her way.

The Ninth Doctor, meanwhile, had looked at the monitors in disbelief. He knew that their timelines shouldn't have been crossed, but he had to know why there was so many of him there. He hurried over and stepped outside, just as two more TARDIS doors opened. A gray haired man stepped out of one, wearing a jumper with holes in it and sunglasses. Out of the other TARDIS, a man in a suit and Converse shoes had stepped out.

"Oh no. _No no no no no..._ " The Tenth Doctor was the first to speak as he saw himself before him. "You can't be here," He told the man clad in the leather jacket as he pointed a finger at him.

"Neither can you," The gray haired Scotsman piped up behind him and both Doctors turned to look at him. He lowered his sunglasses to look at the pair of them. "How did you end up here?" He demanded of the both of them.

"Same as you, I'd guess. The TARDIS just brought us here," Nine answered.

"Who's _us_?" Twelve asked him. "Rose?"

"No," Ten quickly answered, having surmised just by looking at his former self that he hadn't met Rose yet.

"Who's Rose?" Nine asked curiously.

"Sorry. Spoilers," Twelve told him with a small smirk. "And you never answered my question," He pointed out. "Who's us?"

Nine looked pensive for a moment. "There's another one of us - another Doctor - inside my TARDIS," He admitted.

"There's another one of us and you just _took_ him-"

" _Her_. She's just regenerated, I think," He explained. "She hasn't said much. I think it was pretty rough this time," He said.

Ten looked to the gray haired man. "You're further on than either of us. Any of this sound familiar?"

"No. Even if it were, I wouldn't remember it because of the crossed time streams," Twelve admitted. "But we haven't been a woman thus far, so this is past my time."

"Why did you take her? Where's her TARDIS?" Ten asked Nine.

"I don't know. At first I didn't even realize who she was. The TARDIS just brought me there and when I opened the door, there she was. It was some sort of operating suite. I think she might have been the patient when she started to regenerate," Nine explained. They all knew that feeling all too well already. Well meaning people had tried to aid them before, resulting in a regeneration in the morgue. It wasn't an experience any of them wanted to experience again.

"Put her back," Twelve was the first to pipe up. "You can't travel together. Whatever happens to us has to happen as it did. She doesn't belong with you."

"He's right, you know," A female voice said from behind the three of them and they turned to see the young woman standing in the doorway of the TARDIS. She stepped out and walked towards them all. None of them had noticed that she had even joined them, having been too engrossed in the situation at hand. "One of you needs to take me back." She looked at the three of them, taking stock of who she'd been. Each one of them felt like so long ago.

"Well... Would you look at that. Finally ginger," Ten commented, a little surprised and impressed as he noticed her dark auburn hair.

She looked a little confused before realizing he was speaking about her. "I hadn't noticed," She admitted and there was a hollowness to her voice that wasn't lost on the others. "I'm serious though. I need to go back. The TARDIS is still there. They were going to rip her apart just like they did to me. I need to make sure none of them ever hurt anyone again," She insisted.

"What happened to you? Who were they?" Ten asked her, clearly concerned.

"Don't tell us that," Twelve was quick to insist. "We shouldn't know that."

"None of you will remember much of this anyway. The younger regenerations never do," She reminded them. "But it doesn't matter. Take me back. I don't have time for this."

"There's always time," Nine said to her. "And I'm not taking you back there. Not like this. Not until we find out what's going on and why we were all brought here. It had to be for some sort of reason and none of us are leaving until we've sorted it, is that understood?"

"What is it you'd like to hear then?" She snapped at him. "Do you really want to hear what they did to me? Would it make any difference whatsoever? It won't change anything. It won't bring me back."

"What do you mean it won't bring you back?" Ten gently asked her.

"Who I was... who _we_ were. I was good. I was wonderful and I wasn't ready to regenerate. I was nowhere near ready. I was fine. I wasn't even hurt and then they..." She trailed off, her voice breaking a little as she spoke and she shook her head. She couldn't tell them everything she'd had to endure before the regeneration process started. "And I think I've regenerated wrong. This body... it doesn't feel right. None of it feels right because it isn't! I shouldn't be _this_ ," She said, motioning to herself.

"Every regeneration feels a bit like that at first. You're still brand new," Twelve said to her.

"No. It isn't. Not like this," She told them. "It's never been this way before. This time it's different. It's..."

"Hopeless?" Nine supplied and she looked over to him, seeing the anger and loss behind his own eyes. It was the toll that the time war had taken on him.

"Yeah," She agreed quietly. "More than it ever has before. The Vyndorne are ruthless and savage. They're from the planet Lincrassi. That was where I was when you found me," She admitted with another glance to Nine.

Twelve looked confused. "I've never heard of Lincrassi before," He admitted.

"And that's exactly why I wanted to go. It was someplace different. I wasn't going to stay long. I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I had no idea that the Vyndorne were the 'knockout first, medically experiment later' sort," She mentioned. "They were dissecting me alive when the regeneration started," She admitted and that was as far as she was willing to go with it. "Who knows how many others they've murdered to sate their thirst for biological knowledge. And as much as I want to, as much as every bone in my body is screaming at me to, I can't run from it. I have to go back. I have to make them all pay for everything they've done."

"You're in no shape to go back there now," Ten said to her, breaking the silence that had befell them after her revelation. "If you've only just regenerated, you're going to need to have a bit of a rest soon if you haven't already."

She shook her head. "I'm fine," She said gruffly.

"You've already admitted that you're not," Twelve reminded her.

"We'll all go," Nine decided. "We'll all take you there to get the TARDIS and make sure they shut down whatever operation they're running," He suggested.

"I think all of you are less up to the task than I am," She mentioned. "I don't think any of you understand what it is I'm proposing."

"I think we understand well enough. We're not going to allow you to go through with it," Ten said to her. "We'll shut it down, but we're not going to hold the entire planet accountable for the actions of a few."

Fourteen paced a little in front of the three TARDISes, thinking about her next move. "Come to think of it, I don't think it's a good idea if any of you come along. They were able to pick me off as soon as I got out of the TARDIS the first time. If they get any of you, it will send ripples in time because it's not meant to happen. I have to do this alone."

Nine went and stood in front of her, blocking her path and stopping her in her tracks as he reached out, touching her shoulders to keep her in place. "Not a chance," He told her. "We will do this together or not at all. There's still some reason we were all brought together."

"I don't know what it could be," Fourteen admitted to them. "I-" She paused, letting out a breath of regeneration energy that glittered and shimmered from her mouth through the air and she reached out, holding onto Nine for a bit of support for a moment.

"She needs to rest," Twelve said again, crossing his arms.

"I'm you, you _pudding brain_ ," She snapped at him, giving him a look. "And as I seem to recall, we didn't do much resting after we regenerated into your body, did we?" She asked and he frowned.

"And you'd think in however many regenerations it's been since you were me that you'd have learned something by now," Twelve said to her.

"I can't help it we're stubborn," She said to him. "Now, come on then. Either we go now or I'm stealing one of these and going on my own. And I won't stop until they're all dead."

"This isn't right. This isn't us," Ten told her. "I don't know who you are, but we wouldn't make that choice, no matter what we'd been put through."

"Wouldn't we?" Nine asked him. There was a haunted look in his eyes of the all too recent time war he'd endured and the hard choice his last incarnation had to make.

"Not again," Ten said to him firmly. "Never again," He stated, looking towards Fourteen now.

She gave a glance to Twelve. Neither of their younger selves knew that things hadn't happened as they thought in the time war. They couldn't tell them.

"You're not getting any help from me," Twelve told her. "Maybe we were all brought here to stop you," He suggested.

"It doesn't matter why we were brought here. _It doesn't matter._ What _does_ matter is that none of you have a say in this. This isn't a democracy. None of you get a vote because _I'm you_. I've already lived your lives. I already know how each of them ends. I know all of the loss and all of the pain. It doesn't matter what any of you do because I'm where you're going to end up. It's absolutely inevitable that you're going to end up as me and you _don't_ want to be me. _I_ don't want to be me. It's wrong. It's all gone wrong. _I've gone wrong_ ," She lamented and she looked as broken as she felt.

She took a breath and continued. "None of you can understand how I feel because we've never felt it before. There's just this anger... this blinding rage and it hasn't subsided. It's just _there_ right below the surface. Sometimes I think the regenerations are born of the circumstances we were in right before," She mentioned. "I used to be happy. I was optimistic and I looked forward to things. I was so content with anything that came my way because I was just so happy to be alive. They took that from me. The Vyndorne stole that from me. They ripped it out when they ripped me open and I don't think I'll ever be her again. I don't know how I'll ever be whole again," She admitted to them all.

A silence fell over them as they took in what she'd said.

"Maybe there's another way," Nine suggested, realizing it.

She looked over to him, wiping away the tears that were slipping down her cheeks.

"What are you thinking?" She asked him.

"Oh _no_. No, we couldn't," Ten said, catching on before the others did. "Or maybe we could! Oh! That is _brilliant_!" He said, getting excited about it now.

Twelve looked between the two of them with realization washing over his features. "We would be creating a paradox. It has the potential to rip the whole of time and space apart," He insisted. "It's a fixed point."

"Is it?" Nine challenged. "Who would remember it? None of us will ever remember this because we're _already_ in a paradox," He reminded him. "And we're not traveling with anyone, right?" He asked the other two. "If it's just us, no one will ever know. Everything will reset and it'll be like none of this ever happened," He said.

"You mean we'd save me? Before I regenerated?" Fourteen asked, realizing now just what exactly they were proposing.

"If you're really certain this regeneration isn't who we should be, then we don't have a lot of time to waste," Ten told her. They'd never truly done this before to prevent a regeneration, but it seemed like the circumstances just might work in their favor if they were to attempt it.

"You'll disappear," Twelve warned her. "You may never regenerate into this body again. It'll be as though you never existed in the first place with no one to remember you."

"I know. It'll be better this way. This body... there's something wrong with this body," She told them all. She was absolutely fine with risking everything - even her past selves to pull this off and that told her all that she needed to know that it absolutely had to be done.


End file.
